Digital projection systems generally utilize individual light modulating cells arranged to from some type of light modulating array to display an image, with each cell displaying at least a portion of a pixel in response to image data representative of the displayed image. Data updating, or refresh, schemes for such light modulating arrays typically involve updating each individual cell of the array with image data for each frame of the displayed image.
One refresh scheme employed when the individual cells of a light modulating array are arranged in rows and columns involves “writing” updated image data to each of the columns of the array and then enabling an update of the image data to each light modulating cell of a selected row. This process is repeated sequentially through each row to update the entire array with image data for a given frame. However, updating high-resolution digital projection systems in this fashion requires a high data rate to the array.
Consequently, system designers often expend significant effort on developing algorithms designed to decrease these high data rates. However, such algorithms often utilize image interpolation or other schemes that introduce color errors or other visual artifacts into the projected image, and can also limit image special resolution and color depth. Furthermore, even when employing such algorithms, each cell of the array is refreshed with new image data for each frame even though much of the individual cell data often does not change from frame-to-frame. Consequently, a significant portion of system bandwidth is often used in re-writing unchanged image data.